Who am I?
My name is David, and I am an aspiring freelance journalist. I’m born 2000 and grew up with all the old consoles and games my older brother had before me. I literally played video games before I could form coherent thoughts. One of my oldest memories in life is of Sonic The Hedgehog 2. And I formed a very close attachement to the PS2-era of games. All that is to say: video games are the one thing in life I have all the passion in the world for.
Even though video games are my primary interest, I also have quite a lot of other interests that may dictate the type of articles I’m gonna write. These include:
-music theory
-history, anthropology, geography
-theology
-art
-food
Who makes these amazingly breathtaking artworks for your articles?
Glad you asked, they are all made by me unless stated otherwise.
What on earth is a “Cynop”
I am CYNical towards most online discourse, but I am OPtimistic towards the industry and love video games with all my heart. So I wanted a name that captures these 2 things, but “Person with both cynical and optimistic opinions towards gaming and its industry” is quite a mouthful as a name.
But what makes you cynical?
There is not some singular issue to pinpoint, but rather a deeply woven net of smaller issues. The obvious elephant in the room is just the landscape of the internet, where most of what you see is inflammatory by necessity to appease the algorithms. Hardly anyone ever talks about just the stuff they enjoy. And even if they do, most often than not it is to spite those who hate it. This can’t be healthy, gaming is supposed to be a hobby that brings joy and unites people.
Another thing that grinds my gears is that I feel a lot of people in game journalism are not “qualified” to talk about the stuff they talk about. When I say “qualified”, I am not asking for a PhD in the specific niche genre they talk about, but like basic things as having played the major must-played’s. A journalist should never be in a position to say: “Well, I’m not that into classical JPRGs so I don’t know how good this new Indie game that’s heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger is in doing what it sets out to do”. Well, if you’re not into classical JRPGs, get some Final Fantasy, get some Dragon Quest, sit your *** down and learn to enjoy it. People come to you for your opinion, that’s your job, so try to have one. If you can’t manage as much, shut up and stay quiet.
And what are you optimistic about?
Well, video games are amazing. How can you not be excited? In my opinion they are the ultimate combination of all digital skillsets, cumulative works of countless people. Those of yesterday are all still here and yet we keep getting more (I mean technically, a lot of games of yesterday suffer from lacking preservation and some actually really do get lost but that is a topic for an article someday). Am I blind to an industry with an enormous dark underbelly? No, I am not. In fact I am very aware of this underbelly and covering some of it is part of what inspired me to create this blog. But I think there is still soo much to be loved. In even the most rushed and uninspired cashgrabs is the sweat and tears of at least some people who cared. And I think this is beatiful.